Bridget Sloan, Alina Weinstein, Rheagan Courville and Vanessa Zamarripa are the four finalists for the Honda Award for gymnastics, honoring the nation’s top gymnast. The winner, after a nationwide ballot, will become a candidate for the Honda-Broderick Cup, awarded annually to The Collegiate Woman Athlete of the Year.
Every Florida gymnast had something to do with this accomplishment, and scores of the Gators who came before them had to do with it, too, helping set a foundation that helped Faehn sell her program to recruit after recruit. This may be Florida’s most talented team ever — it was certainly the highest-scoring team ever, and probably the only one that could conceivably have performed the resurrection we saw tonight — but even in gymnastics, a sport for the short, those who become great usually have to stand on the shoulders of giants to do so.
For everyone who has contributed to this championship: You did something phenomenal, something that compelled thousands of people watching an Internet stream to fist-pump in living rooms. And we can never thank you enough for that. [x]
We’ve got this.
The Univeristy of Florida: 2013 NCAA Gymnastics Champions
Bridget Sloan has earned Florida’s fourth consecutive SEC Freshman of the Year award (Dickerson: 2010, Johnson: 2011 and Hunter: 2012), and Rhonda Faehn earned her fourth consecutive SEC Coach of the Year award. NBD.
The Florida gymnastics team set their season high score on vault, a 49.625, just .025 away from a school record. Shisler 9.825 (dropped), Wang 9.875, King 9.925, Sloan 9.925, Dickerson 9.925 and Hunter 9.975.
Bridget Sloan pays homage to Alicia Sacramone with her new beam choreography (as spotted by candycoateddoom).
I’ve uploaded Bridget’s routines from today’s meet if anybody wanted to see them. A great first meet for her, hopefully we’ll see her in the AA soon.
VT: 9.925, UB: 9.80, BB: 9.80. Team total: 196.575.
Bridget Sloan makes her collegiate debut for Florida, a 9.925 on vault.
Florida intrasquad. They have seven gymnasts that could legitimately win AA competitions, as well as the specialists who’ll be battling to make lineups. They’re basically 10 deep on every event and they have the perfect balance of senior leadership and freshman talent. If they don’t win NCAAs with this team, I honestly don’t know when they ever will. I’M SO EXCITED.
Also, a healthy Macko doing gymnastics is one of my favourite things.
I actually didn’t know that I was the first world champion to compete in collegiate gymnastics. You know, we’ve had a ton of world champions here in the US, and it’s kind of crazy to think that they didn’t come to college. It’s probably one of the best decisions I’ve ever made, to keep my NCAA eligibility. - Bridget Sloan, Florida [x]
Olympic medalist, world champion and future Gator. She’s already achieved so much, and will only accomplish more when she finally gets to Florida. I’m so, so sad to see her close out her elite career like this. One of my all time faves.
